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China whips up war anger against Japan

Shinzo Abe is easing restrictions on the armed forces imposed after the Japanese surrender (Reuters/Kyodo)

READERS of this weekend’s Chinese newspapers found a belated scoop on the
front pages: the war crimes confessions of General Fujita Shigeru of the
59th Division of the imperial Japanese army.

“Shot dead 12 Chinese people including one woman in Luoyang, Henan,” read one
extract. “Massacred all inhabitants of 50 households in a village . . . used
gas shells during the attack in Maqushan the same day,” said another.

Anyone puzzled by the timing of such revelations from seven decades ago need
only have looked at the columns of denunciation hurled at Japan, which last
week took a small but symbolic step away from its postwar pacifist
constitution. In China the propaganda war is in full swing. A daily atrocity
is promised for the public as the state media publish confessions they claim
were written by Japanese war criminals captured in 1945.